‘Race Correction’ in Medicine: A History of Lung Function Measurements

Wed 9 May @ 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm BST

Lung function measurements are routinely ‘corrected’ for race and/or ethnicity transnationally. In this talk, Professor Lundy Braun draws on the historical and scientific literature on lung function measurements to examine how philosophical ideas of racial difference in lung function in the US became scientific; how race intersected with social class and gender; and how ideas of innate difference gained sufficient traction, such that they persist to the present day with little contestation.